How to Recover Lost or Deleted iPhone Contacts

Lost all contacts on your iPhone? That's really a nightmare, if you don't have iPhone contacts backup. But you don't need to be panic. In this article, we will introduce you 3 methods to recover lost or deleted contacts on iPhone. Read on to learn solutions below.

Many of users may encounter contacts loss and don't know how to get it back. Don't worry, we find dr.fone - Recover (iOS) is a powerful and flexible iPhone recovery software to help you recover your lost or deleted contacts. Actually, apart from recovering contacts, dr.fone can also retrieve your lost messages, photos, music, videos, notes, Facebook messages and more. What's more, it allows you to preview and selectively recover whatever you want. As for more, you can check the box below:

Step 2 Recover deleted or lost iPhone contacts

How to Recover Deleted Contacts from iTunes Backup

If you have iTunes backup and it contains the contacts you needed, then we can try to retrieve contacts from iTunes backup.

Here you can restore your iPhone contacts from iTunes backup in two ways: selectively recover contacts from the backup via dr.fone, or restore the entire backup via iTunes. You can choose one the most suitable for you.

As we introduced above, dr.fone - Recover (iOS) allow us to preview and selectively restore whatever you want from iTunes backup. And you can also export your contacts to your computer, they will be saved as HTML and CSV files. If needed, you can view them directly on your Windows or Mac. Now let's see how to retrieve iPhone contacts from iTunes backup with dr.fone

Step 1. Scan the backup file

There will be a list of backup files displayed, after you click "Recover from iTunes Backup File" on the top of the program's window. Choose the one for your iPhone and click "Start Scan".

Step 2. Preview and recover your iPhone contacts

The scan only takes you a few seconds. All the contents from the backup file will be displayed in details. You can read them all. Then check the box in front of any item you want, and click the "Recover" button. we can read these contacts directly on the computer since they can be saved as .xlsx, .html or .csv file.

Then connect your iPhone to the computer. Go to the "Devices" again, choose the backup file of your iPhone and click on the "Restore" button. When the restore is complete, your iPhone will restart and all the contacts in the backup is on your iPhone now.

3

Recover deleted iPhone contacts from iCloud backup

Provided you have backups on iCloud, then we can recover your lost iPhone contacts from iCloud backup. Also, here we have 2 methods to restore contacts from iPhone. The one is use dr.fone, and the other method is to restore iPhone from iCloud backup. The former one is friendly, safe and easy, while the later one will clear all your current data on your device! You can choose one you like.

Method 1: Preview and recover any contacts you want from iCloud backup (Safe and Easy)

dr.fone also lets you extract the iCloud backup and selectively recover whatever you want from it, so that you don't need to restore the whole backup and reset your iPhone. If you want to have a try, you can download the trial version to try it by yourself. It only takes you a few minutes.

Step 1. Sign in iCloud

Run the program and select "Recover from iCloud Backup File" from the left side of the interface. Then sign in iCloud with you account.

Step 2. Select iCloud backup files and types

When you log into your iCloud, we can see a list of iCloud backup files we backed before on iCloud. Choose the one you want. And select the file types "Contacts" to scan them from iCloud backup.

Step 3. Preview and recover contacts from iCloud backup

After the scan process is completed, dr.fone will list all the contacts on the window. We can select contacts we want to recover. The exported contacts can be saved as .xlsx, .html or .csv file.

Method 2: How to restore contacts on iPhone via iCloud (Erase All Data)

Step 1. Erase iPhone data and settings: Before restoring iCloud, we need to erase iPhone. We can go to "Settings" < "General" < "Reset" < "Erase All Content and Settings".

Step 2. Restore iCloud backup to your iPhone: After that we can start to restore iPhone from iCloud backup by going to "Set up your device" < "iCloud Sign In" < "Choose backup".

Apparently, this method is not safe since we need to erase our device before the restore. And it is not flexible, because we can't restore only contacts.

Conclusion

From the above introduction, we can get 3 methods to recover deleted contacts on iPhone. If you haven't backed up your iPhone contacts before, then we suggest you use Solution 1 to recover your contacts from iPhone directly. If you have iCloud backup or iTunes backup and your wanted contacts are included in those backups, then we can try to recover them from backups.